Broken Saints
by Sinvisigoth
Summary: Bella/Jasper. To what lengths will a mate go to save the other half of their soul? And to what lengths will the vampires go to help another immortal crush a darkness that threatens to turn the world of man in on itself? CONTENT AMENDED 13.01.10
1. Prologue Djinn

_**13.01.10 OK. Those of you who are new to this story…I hope you enjoy it. Those of you who are not…please, please don't hate me for reordering the chapters; it's much better this way and not quite so all over the place. Everything you've already read is still here, there's just an extra 1100 words as the new prologue, which will make much more sense of one of the characters and which it wasn't really fair of me to post as a separate one-shot.**_

_**~Sin~**_

_**Disclaimer : I don't own SM's characters...and don't really care because Cuchulain kicks so much ass.**_

_**NB. Cuchulain is pronounced cuh-HOO-lun.**_

**Prologue – Djinn  
**  
**Five Years Ago - Adirondack Mountains**

DjinnPov

I am a wishing. I visit so many, slipping from the tips of tongues and the heath of the heart. So few hold onto me in the seamless places where they need me that I wonder why they call me at all. Sew me to your soul and I stay.

Today I am a cry for help. Repeated many times and so close together that I become a drum roll I am held, as so seldom now, in the deepest, barest part of this girl. She thinks she is in the woods. I want to tell her that the wood she smells is a coffin, and the whispering is not leaves but trickling. The lid is ill fitting and she is waiting to drown in the earth she came from. She hurts because she has been misused. She is frightened because it is dark. She is dying because they wished it.

*******

She pants. They are done and there is little that is not bleeding and bruised. At first she screamed so loudly that the sound had to remain inside her mind because her vocal chords could not hope to match it. Now there is only a stream of little outward gasps that jerk away from her mouth like a kite on a string. And yet...above all this I can see that her soul is intact. It, too, is torn and bleeding - leaching colours like the vilest moulds and wrapping her not like the silk it should but like the driest lichen on the oldest tree - but it remains attached to her centre of gravity. I wonder how she has accomplished this when it should have been ripped apart along with her body.

While I am drawn inexorably to the wishing, I have never before been drawn to the wisher. What will she be to me? The thought that one of these bundles of meat and feelings should mean more to me than I to her is disturbing.

***

I do not live in a lamp. I tried once but could not fit; one might as well try to contain an ocean in an orange skin. I realise that I am ruining a perfectly good mythical stereotype, but if you knew what it is to squash your consciousness into such confinement you would understand. I had to leave after a day and drift above a mountain pass to erase the claustrophobia.

I should clarify, that I do not live at all. I do not believe I ever did. I would remember living, I think. It looks fun. It looks beautiful. Even pain looks beautiful when you have no synapses along which to fire your electric life.

***

A vixen pads through the leaf litter scattered by the two men, her muzzle wrinkling in simultaneous distaste and interest. The thought of eating a human repulses her; they smell in some ways like other things that are made of meat but have an unnatural scent of metal and dominion about them always. But, the smell of blood is the smell of blood and it clutches at a part of her she would not have been able to describe or locate had she the words.

She digs a little where the vibration is strongest, sensing that there is something of interest less than a metre below her but unsure of how she might reach it and of her desire to do so. The tremor of a smaller, less disturbing body echoes through her whiskers and she crouches as she spies the rabbit which, in turn, has seen her. This eye contact is perhaps the most complete of the animal world; hunter and prey – will you kill me will I escape you? - eye to eye while their cells and tissues wantonly give in to the surge of endorphins and impulses. One chooses to run the other to pursue.

Her cubs are pleased with their meal when she returns to her earth.

***

The girl, aware that another life had tried to reach her for a moment, mews in frustrated need and scratches more violently at the wood above her face. Splinters fall into her eyes but this minor pain does not register. Possibly the pain of having her eyes turned backwards in their sockets overrides anything further to this grievous insult to her flesh. Possibly the adrenaline coursing through her is close enough to an overdose to simply blot out all pain. Is it possible that something, greater even than I, has taken pity on her and granted her a reprieve of some kind?

If the last is true then the universe is proving to be more charitable than my long experience has taught me is likely. If it is not then the time in which I may help her can now be counted in minutes.

***

You might suppose at this point that I am the girl. That I have dissociated myself from the horror and the pain and the dark. The opposite is true. The only way I can help her, this being so separate from myself, is to trade places with her. I can only do this if the other wishes to be me. Right now she wishes she could trade places with anyone. That is enough. Now I will see how exquisite pain is. I will know. For sure and for certain. The beauty of it.

The only thing I am not sure of is what will happen to me when the body dies. Will I be this again?

***

She cannot know I am here. And yet she is reaching for me with everything left of what she was and every possibility of what she may be. She still wants to trade places but she no longer wants to be saved.

Now I see. How this being could survive such treatment and not surrender herself to the amorphous nothing they tried to send her to. Her soul is stitched to her magnificent heart with a shimmer of gold that humbles me in its splendour.

She wants to save me.

***

As I melt into the small space I feel her pass through me and I rejoice that I have been allowed this touch. Aeons spent in contemplation and wonder mean nothing compared to the radiance that bathes me as we switch.

As I settle into my new surroundings I feel her move out and up and I become aware of the greatest source of her pain. They had cut off her wings. I weep not for myself or for her but for the limitless possibility of all things. Then I weep for the pain.

Oh goddess. It. Is. Beautiful.


	2. Chapter 1 Voyage of the Caillech

_**Apologies for reordering the chapters; it was a little all over the place. None of the story has disappeared, there's just an extra 1100 words as a new prologue.**_

_**~Sin~**_

**Chapter One Voyage of the Caillech**

**Present Day – The Sea of Cortez**

**BPov**

I flicked a weevil off the hard lump of something shoved at me by one of Cuchulain's men and cast a withering glance in his lordship's direction. He knew damn well I was unamused by the grim fare and smirked back at me, one foot scuffing unconsciously at the planking. Two weeks of this crap and I was beginning to find the jokes about scurvy less than entertaining. I swallowed drily and gulped at the leather canteen, letting the string attached to the battered tin plate snap taut as the ocean rinsed off the vestiges of my meal.

My roving gaze found an unhappy looking Rosalie hunched between Emmett and the warrior that did most of the men's cooking. I couldn't seem to commit his name to memory yet but had mentally dubbed him the guy who smelled like sheep and sausages, or sheepage for short. I doubt he was aware of this auspicious pnemonic but had seen his even teeth flash in laughter often enough to know that he would not have been offended.

If I were honest, some part of me longed for some small offense to be taken and had made little effort during our voyage to utilise the filter between my brain and my mouth. I wanted badly to hit something until it felt as bad I did. That was going to take an awful lot of hitting, though, and I thought my still human knuckles might not be up to the task. I settled for trying out on my shipmates as many different types of glare as I could concoct. Cuchulain and Emmett seemed to be the only ones immune to this and I had so far earned myself seven muttered 'fuck off's, three 'bitch's and one 'bite me, Swan'. The last, of course, was Rosalie.

The only person I had not turned my evil mood upon was Alice. She sat just behind me, buffered by the marble bodies of Peter and Charlotte. Her eyes were focused on something that only she could see and her companions carried on a low, yet heated exchange over her small head. One or the other was constantly making contact with her, holding a hand, rubbing a forearm, tucking a strand of hair. The latter was futile as the wind was still intent on impressing us all with its high temper.

I jumped down as nimbly as I could and made my shaky way over to them. I knelt in front of my sister and leant my arms on her knees, looking up at her for a second before shifting my eyes to take in my two newest family members. Charlotte smiled down at me and touched my chin for an instant. Peter winked and patted my hand in easy familiarity.

"How has she been?" I asked, taking one of Alice's hands and placing her palm against my face and cupping it with my own. I mirrored the gesture with my own hand on her cheek and gazed into her all seeing eyes.

"Vertical, for the most part." Peter's answer was succinct as ever.

"We've been talking to her on and off all day." countered Charlotte without irritation. She understood her husband's need to avoid the gravity of the situation. "Just because we don't hear her doesn't mean she doesn't answer us. I'm hopeful."

"So am I. I know she'll come back to us when she's ready. I think wherever she is must be peaceful. I hope I'm right about that." I squeezed Alice's hand.

"So, has Big Daddy C given any hints about where we're going?" asked Peter, his serious expression belying the levity of his words.

I shook my head.

"I get the feeling he doesn't quite know yet himself. I'm assuming that he's going to make some kind of decision regarding direction once we hit the open ocean. He'll have to."

I smiled and gave Alice a tight hug before returning to my spot near the bow, glancing over the other seated forms before hopping up to my perch again.

I turned back to stare beyond the bow and my heartstrings began to strum unbearably once more as I remembered the reason for our voyage. I had thought once that the pain of a hasty departure was the worst I could or would have to endure. I now knew that my naivety had left me hideously unprepared for the agonising and very adult feeling of losing a member of my family coupled with my violent fear for his safety. Before his abduction, we had argued up one side and down the other. I had called him every name under the sun and screamed in his face that I hated him.

Despite all that, images of what he may be enduring stabbed at my mind repeatedly and my insides protested sadistically at the onslaught. I needed him home. Safe. With us. With Alice. Even up in my face and yelling at me again for being a stupid, selfish little bitch would have been better than this. Although not the perfect vampire recall of my siblings, my mind did a very good job of torturing me with my last words to Jasper.

My small meal made no discernible sound as it left my body and sank beneath the rushing waves.

I studied Cuchulain's dark features. His countenance reminded me of a cliff face, rocky and brutal. This was fitting as I suspected that he felt emotions in the same way a mountain might feel them; it was dark and then it was light, hot and then cold. The peril we were all in was, for him, a brief alleviation of boredom.

I shivered in anticipation of joining him in battle and glanced among the other faces in the boat. Variously they showed anger, expectation, irritation, hunger and determination. Fear was remarkably absent. I had no doubt that every one of them was humming with the need to start this encounter

"I'm coming, brother." I whispered, my words snatched away by the jealous wind. "And all Hell's coming with me."

**CuPov**

The more fiercely the waters around them raged, the wider Cuchulain's heathen grin stretched, flat white teeth flashing against the lightning in challenge. He propped his foot insolently on the gunwale, his great sword resting against his hip. The tendons of his forearm thickened and contracted in pleasure as his thumb stroked the gleaming blue edge of the blade, which itself sang a bloody harmony to the wind's dirge.

The storm thrashing at the shores of the Sea of Cortez seemed to take his good mood personally and howled its temper through all their bones. It shrieked and skittered along the sides of the boat, drowning the sound of the bodhran and attempting to upset the courageous vessel so that its negative twin, the ocean, could claim them all.

All of the faces below him were still, but two. Gawain, his Master at Arms sang lustily against the squalling elements as his restless eyes and tight lipped nods of encouragement kept the warriors in line. The human, Bella, was standing with a foot on either side of the bow and one hand gripping the foaming mane of the sea serpent figurehead. Her long, mahogany hair was whipping around her like a mare's tail and her lithe form leaned defiantly into the oncoming wind.

She turned to him with a grin that matched his own but her dark eyes were flat and dangerous. A human amongst immortals, and she was still the one most to be feared. He yearned to see the look on the grim bitch's face when she reaped the penalty for taking this one's kin. His hand twitched against the scabbard at his belt and he saw one corner of her mouth twitch upwards as her head nodded fractionally in understanding.

Yes, he inclined his head in agreement, her body sang in anticipation of the coming butchery as his did. She likely would have been quite at home on some ancient battlefield, swinging a war hammer as her skin thralled under the flying blood and her war cry rang in the dead ears of the fallen.

*******

A flick of his eyes commanded Gawain to tighten the sail as he leaned on the rudder and dipped the bow a little further to starboard. There were answers he would need if he were to pick up the phantom trail of the toadish creature that had brought chaos upon all of them.

He rubbed absently at the bristles on his chin with one large hand, the black bond formed in his mind by the invasion of his prey telling him that they were indeed watched. The visions had come to him in his dreams, tempting him to both terror and lust in their sickening intensity, emotions scorned and crushed as swiftly as they were thrust upon him. Their originator was cloaked from mortal men and vampires both but known to him. The attentions of this being were an obsidian whirlpool, not just opposing light but sucking the very essence of it from every thing that walked or crawled.

He looked along the decks again, his pupils constricting unconsciously in mild irritation at the sight of the large one throwing things at the head of his second mate. He allowed himself the smallest and most silent of laughs as they were thrown back at him with equal force, the shock on his face cutting off the booming laugh that normally shook the decks.

These vampires had yet to learn the power with which his presence imbued those who followed him. He would have Gawain set up some sparring sessions when they reached their destination. He had no doubt that they would find some grim amusement even in these most wretched of conditions. It was the lot of the soldier to do so and he knew from a thousand battles that the mock fighting amongst themselves would cement them together as solidly even as would the death charge on the field.

When his eyes reached the human he wondered if she would remain powerless. She considered herself his equal and would not count herself among his followers, travelling instead by his side as natural to her as breathing. He could not gift her with any of his magicks if she did not follow his lead. But that may or may not be necessary. All would become clear much later, a later that would be decided by this stormy and directionless pilgrimage.

She was thinking of the lost one again, that much was clear. Only the angle of her kept her upright in the buffeting gusts as both her small fists clutched at her sides, the muscles of her back quivering with the effort of remaining silent while she fought her own internal battles. As promising as she was, even now, there was much she had yet to learn and it would be a bitter lesson. She would find humility before she would achieve balance, and sacrifice before victory.

He focused his mind again on the task at hand and the ancient enemy calling him to war one last time. Saliva stung his taste buds as the prospect of crushing the oldest usurper of his father's magicks flung hot excitement through his body. And yet there was another. Just out of his field of vision, always a thought ahead and a step behind, came something else. For now, it was something of vague interest but not unease; not a creature of chaos like his quarry, but perhaps some darkened mirror image of himself.

The water before him was still angered, but had pulled back from the heaving fury in which it had lost itself earlier. It seemed to have forgotten the reason for its spite and this comforted him. If something as boundless as the ocean could find forgiveness in simple forgetting, perhaps so could he. Aeons ago his father had told him that those dead souls that had no memory of their time on earth were what made up the tossing, sweeping waters that separated the landmasses.

The thought of traversing a river of souls with no memory and fathomless forgiveness gave him cause to hope that anything might be possible. That one day he, too, might be forgiven.


	3. Chapter 2 Lair of the Phantom Queen

_**Huge thanks to SadnessInTheSunrise for my best ever review and the first for this story; it made my day and inspired me to try even harder.**_

_**Apologies for reordering the chapters; it was a little all over the place. None of the story has disappeared, there's just an extra 1100 words as a new prologue.**_

_**~Sin~**_

**Chapter Two Lair of the Phantom Queen**

**Present Day – Boa Island**

JPov

_ Ice and fire. Fire and ice. Icy fire. Fiery ice._

My mental analogy was for shit. Screw the ice. Fiery fucking fire was eating my limbs whole and it left the burn of the change in the dust. Hell, it took pole position, lapped the fucker four times and took gold, silver and bronze while the change was still spinning its wheels on the starting line. If I could just stop screaming long enough to plan something I could set in motion several of the vicious fantasies skipping gleefully through my shredded mind.

I never thought that it were possible to torture a vampire. Not physically. If I were able to find some chink of silence between my own anguished howls in which to think, I may even have been impressed that someone had found a way. Our diamond hard bodies could be ripped to pieces and the sensation was more of inconvenience. Those of us who chose a human-free menu lifestyle seemed more susceptible to mental torment, but that which does not kill us makes us stronger. Allegedly. Our eternal physical forms were built to outlast mental anguish. I had often thought this the cruellest aspect of our bastard existence.

I do not remember ever being afraid of the dark. As a child and as later a young man it was a natural impediment to freedom as far as my parents were concerned. But I took my own innocent pleasure in breaching its boundaries and sneaking out to see what my treehouse looked like at night or to meet a girl with soft hands and warm lips.

The darkness in which I was now steeped was malevolent and hungry, with syrupy fingers that caressed me grotesquely. It was trying to find a way in. I felt like a butterfly pinned in the centre of a singularity and had, in both my vampire perfect and human fragmented memories, never been so thoroughly and brazenly terrified. Not only for my existence, but for the soul I had come to believe permeated every atom of my being.

Heartbeat or no, I had fought in wars and lain with woman, had known success and been embittered by disappointment, had given of myself and known loss in equal measure, and I had both broken hearts and been heartbroken. I was by every standard of human society a man and man had a soul.

All the while I screamed into the thick, black void I stopped up every mental entrance into myself. That puckered, slithering bitch had no intention of letting me leave with breath or sanity animating my body; I had no intention of letting her plunder me with the night that sloughed from her pores.

Motherfucker was scared. Motherfucker was not in control as much as he'd like. Motherfucker wanted to go the hell home. And motherfucker was righteously, mortally pissed off.

*******

There were only two sources of light piercing the space in which I was being held. They were the only things that gave me a firm grip on the notion that I was not, in fact, dead. I couldn't tell from one moment to the next whether or not this disappointed me.

I couldn't call this place a room because I couldn't see where the walls and ceiling were. Nor the floor, for that matter. Fuck. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness at some point during the first day, though after how long I couldn't tell. My internal clock was helping me to keep track of days, in spite of the fact that my 'meals' – what a fucking joke – were deliberately irregular to enhance mental confusion. Because I could only keep the pain in my limbs at bay for small periods at a time the hours were elusive and meaningless.

I had been a prisoner here for twenty-six days, give or take.

The glow from beneath the toilet door was yellow and unchanging. It made me feel ill to look at it, my nose perceiving its luminosity in tandem with my eyes in some strange and dreamlike synaesthesia. This was the only angle from which I had seen the lavatory to which I was taken halfway between feedings, blindfolded, to regurgitate the solid parts my vampire body could not absorb. I refused to think about the experience while I was in there, and was thankful for the blindfold. The quality of the rotting yellow light gave me a mental picture of porcelain with long dried brown streaks and crawling flies. I shut off my sense of smell to prevent any chance that this nauseating fantasy should be proven correct.

For some reason I couldn't shake the feeling that if I were to look in the toilet I would see a human heart sitting at the bottom, foetid and numb. Even in the keening dark my whole being shunned the sickly light and the visions it brought me.

The other shaft that transected my purgatory was the colour of moonlight whatever time of day it was. There was a small window in the black through which it streamed. Without knowing where I was I couldn't tell if it was a tear in a curtain, a piece of glass that had been missed with a paint brush, even a broken corner on a plank of wood. With the exception of the nights without moon, this little piece of undark was there twenty-four hours a day. I inferred from this that the wall faced roughly South and that the land beyond it was fairly flat. No building was naturally this dark; dank nights spent in loudly breathing caves as a soldier had taught me that only stone blocked out all light completely. If this was not a cave, someone had gone to great lengths to lightproof it. Unfortunately, the nature of my prison did not effect the depth, texture or stench of the shit I was in.

It wasn't the light itself that interested me. It didn't give me hope that the world remained outside the room; I knew that the world went on without me. It wasn't that it helped me tell the time; its unchanging colour rendered it useless in that respect. It was the path of the narrow beam that I followed with every ounce of concentration I could liberate during the brief moments between feeling the pain and having to scream. I had been nailed to the crossed posts for three days when I realised that at the zenith of its course, the light illuminated part of something solid.

The first time I noticed it I had been counting prime numbers to keep my logical processes intact. My first commanding officer had done this in a tortured whisper as an unqualified field surgeon sawed through his shin bone just below the knee. It was the only thing I could think of to deny the pain for any duration without bringing to mind some memory of a member of my family. I had reached 10,613 by the time I realised that something floated in the middle of my vision.

A pale, slightly curved triangle of indiscernible texture was lit up by the sunmoon beam. Even with enhanced vampire vision, my depth perception had been severely reduced by the sensory deprivation. I estimated that it was about forty feet from me. At that distance, its dimensions must have been about an inch and a half on two sides and just over that on the third. I was so fixated on the object that I lost track not only of how much time was passing but also of when I had last blinked.

Over the course of a few hours the light moved and revealed that the object was bigger than I had first thought. What had been a triangle curved upward at the right and downward on the left. Just before the light waned to move in the other direction I saw a concave shadow start to form. It was enough to spark recognition. I had been looking at another person's heel.

"Hey. Is there someone else here? Are you alive?" My voice was not my own, the product of almost a month of screaming my agony and oblivion.

No voice answered me, but two chain links whispered together so slightly that I might have missed it but for my heightened sense of hearing and the absence of every other sound.

"You're there, aren't you?" I could not have put into words at that moment how very fucking much I _needed_ someone to be there.

Every question after the first was met with absolute silence. After hours of trying to get the other person to answer I turned my energy toward burning the image of what I had seen into my brain. My deprived mind was receiving so little actual input that it was dazzling me with a kaleidoscope of images and false memories. If I wanted to know or remember anything I had to make a conscious effort to do so for the hallucinatory dervish I experienced at an almost continuous level had short circuited my vampire memory. I had to wait twenty-four hours in total before I glimpsed the person again.

This time, on day four, the light illuminated half of what I had seen the day before and both the curve of an ankle and the downward slope of a suspended foot. The bone that formed the joint of the ankle was delicate and, although the muscle tone around it was good, it was obviously not a man's limb that I was looking at. They had a woman chained up in here. Why could I not smell her?.

Her presence made sense of small, trivial sounds, though, like the ones I associated with meal times that I had ignored before I saw her for the first time. The unseen persons who brought me sustenance took longer to leave the room than was necessary if they were only feeding me. I also noticed that after they had fed me the disgusting chunks of raw flesh from which I had to glean my blood, I could hear two metal dishes, not one, clinking faintly on the tray when they left the room.

Over the next twenty-two days my friend the sunmoon showed me two slim legs, hips and buttocks, a flat belly almost concave with hunger, a strong and supple looking back, a slender ribcage and chest supported by flat, hard muscle. Her arms were stretched taut above her head as she swayed minutely in the chains she hung from. There was no part of her that I reacted to any more or less than any other. Even when the light, on days twenty-four and twenty-five, unveiled one night the undersides of her breasts, and the next the whole orbs of both, I retained only a single-minded gratitude that there was still some beauty left for me, even in this forsaken kingdom.

*******

Every day I had one more piece to add to the picture taking shape in my mind. Every day I strove to both refresh all of the previous images and at the same time add the present one to the unfolding whole. It was like watching a flower grow in excruciating time lapse. Today, in about the time it took to recite the first, middle and last names of all the boys in my first regiment, I would see her collar bone and her neck.

I had never stopped asking her questions. Every day I asked if she was alive, OK, if she spoke English, German, Spanish, Russian. I asked her name, over and over. But she either could or would not answer me, not even with movement. It was as if she were aware of my visions of her as a partly lit statue and immersed herself fully in the role. I started to think of her as Clair after a piece of classical music called Clair de Lune, because she always looked as if she were made of moonlight.

I had been slipping in and out of cohesive thought, the periods between interspersed with unthreaded visions from my childhood, all changed in some minor way. Birthday parties that had been doused in bright sunlight took place at night; conversations with my parents were held in an office; my toys were replaced with weapons that I did not understand and could not use. All of these almost dreams made me feel helpless; a feeling I was not familiar with in the waking world.

When I next found myself lucid and – thank fuck – pain free for more than two seconds, I tried to remain that way. I visualised campaign maps behind my eyes and calculated routes between random points; quickest, safest, most vantage points, fewest civilian casualties, and so on and so on. This was just one of hundreds of exercises I had forced my mind through since I was taken. Even for us, the depletion of logic and rationale is one of the worst side effects of any kind of incarceration. Factor in the added bonus of no light, sound, social interaction or mobility and you had all the makings of a self-lobotomy.

The other most important thing was sight. Mine had already deteriorated to the point where I was scared that I would not regain it fully. I had to regularly try to convince my brain that my eyes were experiencing bright light. This meant that the shock from sudden exposure to just that during a possible escape or an eventual release was minimised. Keeping my body in shape was not an issue in the sense of exercise, but even a vampire can begin to feel unhealthy when fed dregs and forbidden the hunt that should precede engorgement. Movement was impossible with the cruel spikes pinning me like a laboratory specimen.

I was ashamed of my immobility.

The light was approaching the space in front of me which I knew contained the other prisoner. I watched and waited, my mind ceasing its gymnastics and turning inward to some peaceful place that had been locked for a very long time. I wondered if she realised that her presence was helping to keep my mind from devouring itself.

The light reached her and I saw the gleam of the first millimetres of her skin. The underside of an arm, then the small abyss of a crease in her skin, preceded the clef of her left collar bone, which unfurled like a wave approaching the shore. The small concavity at the base of her throat was revealed slowly but surely, and my breath hitched as I saw it pulse slightly when she swallowed. The elegant scroll of her right collar bone came into view just before the light began to work its way up her throat.

"One."

The single word stunned me for a moment. I couldn't be sure whether it was she or I who had uttered it. If it had been me, I did not know to what I was referring. I waited to see if either of us would elaborate.

"One." It was her.

"One? One what?" I was afraid to raise my voice above a whisper in case she was frightened back into silence.

"One more day." Her speech was low and mellifluous and I could not make out an accent from those few words. Her voice suited the moonlight I saw her in; it sounded like the tide.

"What happens in one day?"

"We see."

"I don't understand."

I was met with silence again.

"What do we see? Please answer me." I couldn't let her lapse into that black silence again.

She moved as much as she could and her chin and lower lip entered the beam of light. "You see me like I see you. Don't you? Piece. By piece."

"You can see me? This whole time you could see me?" It hadn't occurred to me. Where before the darkness had made me feel clothed even in my nakedness, I now felt utterly visible.

"Yes. It's kept me occupied. Holding onto each piece of you that I've seen. Building a whole." Her voice was soft yet commanding in a way that sent chills dancing along my spine. It was the first bars leading into a symphony.

"Do you have a name?"

"I did. But that seems like a long time ago. Don't you have one for me?"

"How did you know?" I felt her shrug more than heard it. "Clair. Because you look like moonlight and I always liked that piece of music, Clair de Lune."

"Clair will do for now." She said it in a tone that left no room for me to ask what her long ago name had been.

"Should I infer from your question that you have a name for me?"

"I've been thinking of you as David, like Michelangelo's statue."

"I'm flattered, but my name is Jasper, Jasper Whitlock. You said something about long ago. Just how long have you been in here?"

"I lost count after a while. I think…perhaps…"

I heard her chains jangle for a moment and from the sound of her breath it seemed as if she were working up to something which would require great effort. I saw the illuminated portion of her arch violently forward and back and realised that she had flicked her hair between her raised arms so that it hung over her chest. She drew another deep breath and flung it out in front of her where it was illuminated in foxfire. For one suspended breath I saw a glorious mane, outstretched in both supplication and command, conducting the very light it travelled.

"When I was taken, my hair was just below my ears. If you could see how long it was, maybe we could guess how long I've been here? It grows fast, maybe nine inches every twelve months?"

My breath caught in my throat, unneeded but torturous. When her hair had flashed out into the light, what I'd seen had been at least three and a half feet long. Call it growth of three feet since her capture. What I had seen represented years.

If it had not been for my vampire perception, however, another more singular insight would have escaped me thoroughly. As it was, for one infinitesimal moment the impact on my senses, my intellect and my knowledge of all that was extant and possible caused a single, rapt drumbeat to tickle my ribs from the inside. As she had arched against the moonbeam in violent concentration I had seen, protruding as virgin buds from two scarred and splintered stumps, the reason she had not allowed me at any time to see her shoulder blades.

Her wings were growing.


	4. Chapter 3 Tip of the Iceberg

_**Apologies for reordering the chapters; it was a little all over the place. None of the story has disappeared, there's just an extra 1100 words as a new prologue.**_

_**~Sin~**_

**Chapter Three Tip of the Iceberg**

**Fourteen months ago – Forks, Washington**

**APov**

I breathed in, my chest expanding with the swelling notes of the cello, exhaling as the violins picked up the wordless paragraph.

_Flicker_.

The scene barrelled into me, my room, bed and window forgotten as the music from my stereo was replaced by the war drum of the dark lord before me. I couldn't tell when it was, but knew that it was a broken timeline. This one, born in the past and bringing it with him, was forfeit to no laws but his own. It was the future, no doubt of that, but I knew without asking that I was not an active part of it. This saddened me. And for one brief eternity, the limits placed on me by my own sight allowed me to feel human and finite.

_Shift_.

My room was around me again and I found myself looking into the worried eyes of my husband. He stroked my cheek with a finger and slid onto the bed next to me.

"Alice, baby, are you OK? You just flooded the house with the strangest vibes." He tangled his feet with my own and pulled me closer.

"Vision." I panted. "I'm fine, though." I was holding his hand tightly enough that it would have crushed a human's bones, unsure of the truth of my second statement.

"Anything good?" His breath tickled my neck as he planted butterfly kisses along it and onto my shoulder. He meant to comfort me, not turn me on, but damn me if he wasn't doing both.

"I'm not sure, Jazz. Good, bad, in between. Whatever it is, it's big. I think there's a change coming and none of us are going to be able to hide from it." My fingers rolled the cuff of his shirt absently as I revisited the scene in my mind.

_The man was an eclipse. Any of those surrounding him would have been a great prize on the battlefield but the one who led them surpassed anything I or my kind have ever seen. He was no vampire. Large for a human, some seven and a half feet, he moved with the grace and power of the large cats that lived on the hot plains half a world away. His abundant mane was reminiscent of them also, but of a colour never found on those marvellous beasts._

I looked up as Jasper smoothed my bangs from my face and his brow furrowed as he experienced the awe that was fluttering through me.

_In my mind's eye I watched as the Goliath flung out a colossal hand, gesturing that something be brought to him. That he was obeyed without hesitation and without having spoken did not surprise me. From his blue-black hair to the copper skin stretched over muscles that could have rent most men in two, everything about this one shone like a beacon. There was something in him which did not register on any of my senses, and was utterly invisible to my otherworldly foresight, yet churned and roiled under his skin and was so undeniably _there_ that the thought of his enmity made my skin prickle._

I flinched out of the mirage and sank back, letting the soft down of the bed envelop me. Something about what I had just seen nudged at the edges of my consciousness but remained veiled as I grasped at it, sliding out of reach with smug agility.

"You're reaching." After decades together, one supporting when the other falls and vice versa, Jasper knew the moment I started pursuing what I was not yet meant to comprehend.

"Pssh." I huffed. "I want it now."

"That's not how it works and you know it. Let it go, Alice; it'll come back when it's feelin' friendlier." He kissed my knuckles one by one, his golden irises regarding me knowingly.

Jasper saw my prescience more as a companion rather than a gift. Something about the interactivity of the process and the way the visions skittered from and to me on their whim gave him cause to anthropomorphise them. He'd once described a particularly elusive vision as a 'cocktease'. I'd had to let him have that one when, months later, the final clarity was almost sexual in its conquest.

"Guys!" The fragile moment was broken by Emmett's large voice. "Hunt! Now! You promised!"

I giggled. I know Jasper had been jittery with Emmett's excitement earlier today after I predicted not one but two bears emerging from slumber right into his loving arms. There was no way my husband was getting out of this one, but for the sake of my whirling mind I was loathe to leave the comfort of the room's quiet walls.

Jasper grinned his understanding and kissed my forehead quickly before heading out the door with a spring in his step. I mirrored his grin inwardly; Emmett wasn't the only one excited about tonight's hunt.

I sighed guiltily as I prepared to ignore my husband's advice.

*******

I pulled a sleep mask over my eyes and luxuriated in the sensory deprivation as I unwound my cluttered mind and began to search. I meant to make that vision mine and I was prepared to use some fairly dark energy to do it. I knew what Jasper meant about not chasing it, but something churning inside me told me that I wouldn't be shown enough until it was almost too late. I couldn't risk those I loved for the sake of psychic propriety.

I pressed my palms into the bed as the first splintered images spun under my conscious mind.

_Slide._

_The dark Goliath hefted a giant sword in one hand, the muscles behind the hand that touched it boiling and rolling under the skin. The transformation sped up his arm, his hair standing on end, until it reached his shoulder…_

_The same giant hand in another time gripping the shoulder of my husband as he spewed his wrath on the enemy before him…_

I shifted a little uneasily, unsure of how I felt about this one touching my husband. I would have to trust Jasper to choose well with whom he would stand in time of war.

_Bella using her bare knees to grip the sides of a gleaming black horse, muscled like an Angus bull, as it slashed at some malodorous, slithering evil with the obsidian scimitar protruding from its forehead..._

_Twitch._

My eyes flew open and I sucked in a huge breath.

"No fucking way." I breathed out, grinning like a stoner. "That is so fucking coo.."

_SNAP._

_Pain. PAIN. Pain and screaming. Pain and blood. Writhing wrenching heartbreaking agony…_

I arched off of the bed with the force of it. I would have given anything, anything on this earth for it to stop but the images pounded against my mind like tsunamis. This vision was much, much earlier than the others, perhaps as little as a couple months away.

_Bella's face, twisted in the most intense terror imaginable. A swathe of shining bronze hair flashing in sunlight as a powerful male thrust himself so violently between her legs that I heard her pelvis crack._

"Nonononono." I whimpered, scratching at my face as I sought to stave off the horror my mind was being raped with.

_A pale vampire hand pulled Bella's head to one side as its owner bit through one side of her neck. Her eyes were unseeing and her body a pitiful and shattered thing, splintered ribs and shards of hip bone poking from her blue-white skin and congealed blood dripping from the yawning wounds._

"Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh." My body shook with the outrage of seeing my sister like this and grunts of horror and anger spattered the room as the freight train of the vision hammered into me without respite.

_One of her collarbones protruded from her pale throat, smashed and marrow red, the vampire licking the crimson drops from its ivory fragments. One profound and perfect tear fled down Bella's cheek as her broken body was rocked with one final thrust, an inhuman roar celebrating her defeat. Her eyes jittered for a second, then one pale, strong hand reached up and snapped her neck like a twig…the pale head turned…_

_Wrench._

I screamed as I had never done before as I ripped my mind away from the evil illusion in my head. The last image had been seared into my brain and I screamed without end as I denied, with every atom of my being, the face I had seen.

_Edward._

**BPov**

My eyes widened in horror as the hatchet I'd just thrown narrowly missed Emmett's grinning face and continued its trajectory toward the playing card pinned to the tree. The thick, wedge shaped blade zinged stridently for a fraction of a second as it buried itself in the Ace of Spades.

"Goddamnit Emmett!" I glowered at him, murder not far from my thoughts as the fleeting panic dissipated as instantly as it had arrived. "I wish that had hit you." I muttered under my breath as he slouched toward me looking both smug and impressed.

"Aw. Were you worried about me, baby girl?" He punched me lightly on the shoulder, pretending not to have heard the second part.

"I was worried about my axe." I ground out in a dangerous monotone, rubbing my shoulder. This only made him laugh harder.

"Never fear, baby girl. You've been at this for months. I'd have been shocked if you'd hit anything other than that sweetspot right there." He jerked his head toward the tree. "I wouldn't be much of a mountain man if I couldn't teach you how to throw a hatchet straight."

"Yeah, yeah. Now when do I get to start on the goddamn crossbow?" I plinked a fingertip on his nose, keeping his attention on my demand.

"Aw, hunny, I think you're ready for something much more dangerous." he drawled with a twinkle in his eyes and what looked an awful lot like silent laughter shaking his huge frame.

"Do I dare ask?" I rolled my eyes, trying desperately to hide the smirk twisting my lips.

"Well, as you ask." He tried his utmost to look innocent and earnestly helpful. "I figured you shouldn't really get into anything else until you've mastered…the banjo!"

I groaned. Emmett had a profoundly intelligent and thoughtful side and a good few more layers than the others gave him credit for. On other days, that is. I'd been pleasantly surprised six months ago when he'd asked if he could teach me to use weapons so that I could protect myself a little better. Absolute shock, and no small amount of guilt, followed when I found that his interpretations and thoughts on Sun Tzu's The Art of War would be part of my training. Today…today's philosophical approach was more Jackass than Zhou dynasty.

I punched him and immediately regretted it, hopping around with my throbbing fist clamped under the other arm. I levelled an evil eye in his direction but my unrealistic thoughts of dismemberment were interrupted by Jasper as he appeared behind Emmett, clamping a hand over his mouth and broaching my irritation with a blanket of serenity. He winked at me.

"I believe the words were 'Hunt' and 'Now', Emmett." he muttered into his brother's ear, throwing me an apologetic look.

"Mmmph." was all Emmett could manage before Jasper pulled him off toward the trees with a dark chuckle.

My mind happily tittered over mental images of Emmett-torture while I tried to de-tree my hatchet. I had almost succeeded when I heard the most bloodcurdling scream come from the house. I felt my skin shrink in close and motion replaced immobility as I raced back to the house and in through the French doors.


	5. Chapter 4 The Beast Within

_**As those of you who've been following the story will have noticed, I've reordered the chapters somewhat. None of the story has disappeared, there's just an extra 1100 words as a new prologue; I didn't think it was fair that I had posted it separately so it should make more sense of one of the characters without you having to go find it. As it stood, I thought that the story was far too all over the place Pov-wise and it was hopping between timelines too much; AuntBell's much appreciated review confirmed this. Hopefully you will enjoy this more linear version better. **_

_**Those of you who reviewed the old version, thank you very much. However, if you don't enjoy this version as much and have left a review that you feel no longer applies, please feel free to ask me to remove it; I will not be offended.**_

_**If you liked the story the way it was…SORRY, but I would rather do this now than realise thirty chapters in that I should have done something about the layout at the beginning.**_

_**~Sin~**_

_**PS AUNTBELL TURN YOUR MESSAGE FEATURE ON IN YOUR PROFILE SO I CAN REPLY TO YOUR MESSAGE! :)  
**_

**  
Chapter Four The Beast Within**

**Thirteen months ago – Forks, Washington**

**EPov**

The glass walls of the house winked in the weak sun, throwing strange white geometry across the surrounding trees. The flickering angles and shadows added to the surreal quality my inner world had been drenched in for the last year. The tree in which I perched swayed minutely and the trunk wheezed and cracked at the motion, which for some reason annoyed me. But that was nothing new; there was very little that did not irritate me now.

I brought to my lips, on the crumpled hem of my shirt, the last dregs of blood that had spilt as I drank from the young man at the edge of town. He hadn't cried out. Not even with his mind. I think I may spend the rest of my existence wondering why.

I can see movement behind one of the windows. Dark hair. _Bella_. I am still so choked with blood that I smell nothing but surrender. It doesn't matter that it wasn't hers.

I lean my face against the trunk of the tree and feel the cold green flavour of moss pressed against my eyelid. All textures have colour now. My longing for her has burned coal red in my bones while I wandered. Now she moves up into my mind and sears me whitely.

Far. So far. I haven't heard a single thought in over eleven months. I think I have forgotten how to think in words and am communing within myself with pictures and tastes. Who would have thought that longing tastes like sage and woodsmoke?

_Bella. Bella, Bella. Oh, my heart. I tried. I waited. I hurt and I WAITED. WHY DIDN'T YOU COME?_

My hand drifted down to caress the part of me that would bring her back to me. She still lived in me, picture perfect, her silent movie legs grasping at me, back arching, lips parting. It would have been so good. So good if she'd come to me and let me give her everything she asked for. The tree screamed as an unnoticed blow sent one of its branches hurtling toward the forest floor.

It would not be so good now. She had burnt away what gentleness I once possessed. _Selfish_. All my waking dreams end with her neck in my mouth and ashen bone bursting through ruby flesh. _Break her_. My fingers garrotted my aroused flesh as I saw myself licking dark marrowblood from the tip of a shattered bone while I thrust into her. _Bitch_.

Without further thought I leapt to the ground and was stalking toward the house before I even realised I was moving. So good. So close. Love you hate you. Hate you love. Hate love. Hate you hate you want you.

_I'm coming_.

**EmPov**

The riptide of a pulse I no longer possessed pounded inside my skull as I held my snarling, feral brother against the bedroom wall. His furious attention was fixed on the sprawled and ruined form upon the bed as he struggled violently to reach her. A sheaf of dark hair had fallen across her flat, vacant eyes and the only sign that part of her was still in there was the occasional twitch, as if she were experiencing REM sleep.

My heart shattered into a thousand pieces as I took in the unnatural angle of her limbs, the crescent gouges in her chest and the shredded pieces of blue silk that hung as threads from one thigh. A matching brassiere and a shirt, reduced to nothing but chewed strips, lay scattered. My civilised mind had retreated in horror and its primal remnants raged at the injustice, goading the beast of me up from the depths to apply the crushing pressure of my arm to Edward's throat. I felt it crack and yield.

"What have you done?" I roared into his distorted features. "Why? WHY would you do this? HOW could you do this?" I gripped his jaw in one hand and shook him furiously.

His black eyes skittered behind his fair hair and my beast growled at the flecks of scarlet it saw in them. His venom was dripping down my wrist while his hands and feet clawed at my body and I felt his jaw give way under my fingers, his once beautiful face wrecked by his own barbarism and my anger. I still don't know what my monster and I would have done had Carlisle not crashed through the door at that point.

"Emmett! Let go of your brother." The words were out of his mouth before the heavy oak door crashed against the far wall in an agony of splinters.

"Carlisle he.."

"Now." The word was flat and cold as winter and I knew without turning my head that Carlisle was looking at my broken little sister as he said it.

He made a move to step toward me but all three of us froze as Rosalie entered the room like a whirlwind and stopped just inside the door, her eyes taking in the scene with inhuman speed.

Her beautiful golden eyes, so capable of compassion and gentleness, flickered to obsidian and a monstrous howl tore out of her throat as she ripped Edward from my grasp and crashed through the thick glass of the window, her teeth already tearing at his throat.

**Earlier that day**

**RPov**

Bella crinkled her nose adorably as she held up the blue silk lingerie, fingering the fabric while her small tongue swiped across her bottom lip in concentration. She let out an unladylike snort and smirked at me. We both knew she was going to buy it but she enjoyed pretending that she needed to think about it some more, and every bit as much I enjoyed letting her think I didn't know. She huffed in amusement and hooked the hanger over one finger, pulling me toward the cashier.

"Have we done enough damage yet?" she asked with an arched brow as she accepted the small lilac bag.

"Possibly. Do you want to go sit and get a coffee?"

"That" she hooked an arm through mine "sounds divine."

We ignored the stares as we wandered to the small tables of the café and sat with our backs to the doors, content to watch all the people walking past who hadn't finished with their shopping yet. A smile to Angela, who was busting tables before starting her first year at veterinary college, and two espressos were whisked out through the doors and placed in front of us.

"Thanks, Angela." I murmured, letting the fragrant steam waft past my nostrils. "Only another two weeks of this and you'll be mopping up puppy pee instead of coffee."

"Oh yeah." She beamed. "And I can't wait. So are you two sexy ladies done for the day?"

"I believe we are." My sister grinned at Angela, her eyes crinkling slightly behind her sunglasses. "We're all off to Dartmouth in a couple weeks so we're getting in as much retail therapy as possible before we have to live in abject poverty as students."

I chuckled at that. The thought of any of us living in poverty was pretty damn amusing. And possibly slightly scary if I thought about it too much. The likelihood of that was pretty slim, though; with a family of vampires, plus one, to hang out with and a sex god for a husband, my time and inclination for self analysis were pretty limited.

"I'll be back when you're done with your coffees, ladies." said Angela, moving quickly off to serve an old couple who were looking at lunch menus.

"So, sis" I tapped her hand with one finger "what are the plans for this evening?"

"I was thinking…girlie night in? Movies, manicures and margaritas?"

"All my favourite M's." I winked at her. "Think little Miss Stay-at-home will be up for it?"

"She will. I know it." She nodded definitely, turning the small coffee cup continuously between her palms. "I don't know why she didn't want to come shopping today, maybe it has something to do with those visions she's been having the last month or so. I've never heard anyone scream like she did when she had the first one."

"I don't think I have, either." I squeezed her hand. "I get the feeling that the rest of them have been as bad, if not worse, than that first one, and I think it's taking a lot out of her not to let it show. She doesn't want us to worry."

"All the more reason for some relaxation. Our girlie nights are fun and I like it being the three of us now, instead of the two of us and you feeling left out."

"Me too. Me too." I squeezed her hand again then gestured at her coffee. I grinned. "Aren't you going to drink that?"

"Ew. No. It tastes disgusting. I just love the smell and the warmth." She wrinkled her nose delicately before returning to her cup twirling. "So…" She leaned forward. "About this girlie night…"

Forty-five minutes later, our plotting finished and our beverages cool, Angela came over to take our cups away with a knowing smile and a chuckle.

"You two don't change." I had to laugh at the semi irony of that statement.

"Sorry, Ang." Bella smiled apologetically.

"Ah, don't worry about it, sweetie." Angela cleared the cups away and cleaned the table top with an efficient and well practiced wipe of a cloth.

"We'll catch you later in the week, Ang." I said, standing and gathering up my purchases. "We have a girlie night to set up and this one has some sexy undies to try on as soon as we get home." I quirked an eyebrow.

"Have fun guys."

"We will, hun." We both hugged her as we made to leave.

"Bye, Rose." Angela waved with her free hand. "Bye, Bella."

*******

I parked the car outside the front door and opened the passenger door for Bella before she had time to see me move. She flinched a little and swatted at me as she giggled.

"Stupid speedy vampire." She winked at me and hopped out, thrusting her hands into the piles of bags and picking up many as she could carry.

"Ah, you're just jealous." I chuckled. "Come on. Let's go show Alice that sexy little blue number."

"Hey, human speed here!" She staggered slightly under the momentum of the bags swinging from her arms. "Anyway, there's no rush. She already has a set just li…" she was cut off by an angry howl.

"What have you done?" the voice roared. I knew it was Emmett the instant I heard him and stuffed Bella back into the car, locking the doors. I was through the front door faster than the laws of physics allowed for and reached the top of the stairs in the blink of an eye.

Everything slowed down as I reached the entrance to Alice and Jasper's room. The door was no longer there and what I saw through the opening stopped me in my tracks. Faster than any mind but a vampires could comprehend I took in the unmoving, splayed limbs of my sister on the bed, my naked, screeching brother, the devastated face of Carlisle and the murderous form of my husband. As my eyes swept over them all motion and sound ceased in its entirety. My gaze swept back over Emmett's hunched body. Every muscle was standing out in sharp relief and his lips were drawn so far back from his teeth that he almost looked like a wolf.

My brother's face was contorted with something I'd prayed the length and breadth of my soul never to see again. I looked back to the bed. _Sister_. The time dilation distorted further as my gaze travelled, unwillingly, up her legs to rest on the sensitive flesh between them. It was torn, bitten and glazed with silvery venom. As I watched, horrified, one single drop streaked down her labia and at the sound it made as it hit the sheets my mind deserted me completely.

_Edward__._

I smelled, felt and heard nothing as I launched myself at him, taking us both through the window. The bottomless chasm that I hadn't unleashed since the day I awoke to this life bit into his neck and I knew words no more.


End file.
